Watch this video of a very primitive-looking man who was not conditioned for his task from age five, as were ancient archers, and imagine him much stronger.
Now imagine if he were riding a horse. I would recommend you skip the archer bitch smear of this video and go to his rebuttal video, if you are a skeptic. What this reminds me of, is very similar to teaching boxing to a karate person and seeing their eyes light up when they find out they were existing in an entirely different target acquisition dimension than what was possible with greater mobility and simplicity, which ironically permits nuance.
The bows the ancients would have used were of many types, but far more powerful than his. It was known that the strength necessary to ply such bows had to be developed from childhood, taking 15-16 years to train an English longbow man. American Indians used arrows in the hand, but their archery has been ignored.
Because of the success of the Greek Hoplites and Roman legions in antiquity, archery is often discounted. One should remember that Crassus lost all of his legions, as well as his head, against Parthian archers and that the Greek hoplites were slaughtered by the Macedonians under Alexander, who used the hoplite infantry type in three forms, for three different reasons, but got most of their offensive infantry work done with two regiments: the Cretan Archers and the Agrianian Javelin men, with the heavy horse usually striking the definitive blow.
In the form developed by the Mongols under Genghis Khan, militarily superior to any later force fielded until the American Civil War, the archer ion horseback formed the basis for the most dominant military and largest operational land area in all of history. There were more square feet of operational ground on planet earth in which a tumen of Mongol warriors could expect to survive and prevail than the U.S. Special Operations command could currently occupy with such impunity. Likewise, the English longbow men were superior to the musketeers and red coats of later English armies, but disappeared from the battlefield simply because 16 years was too long to invest in a soldier once guns came along and permitted armies to train 16 musketeers to every longbow man, when he was only worth four musketeers on the field.
For the record, of Alexander’s 35,000 man army, 28,000 held on for dear life while the other 7,000 went for the enemy throat.
There were three units of super hoplites who outlived Alexander by 40 years and commanded the highest prices in the mercenary age of his successors. There were the Cretans and Agrianians, and then the rich boys on their horses who rode with Alexander. When it came to all of the nasty work in close terrain and around cities the Cretans, Agrianians and foot companions basically did it all while the rest provided support. When you realize that the Agrianians threw their weapons at close range and had no armor and still ran right up to the heaviest armored units of Persian horsemen and messed them up, then you get the idea of how effective 500 jumping archer monkeys like this guy would be at close range, with bows two or three times as powerful.
James, if you pull up old photos of Ishi, who was the last Yahi, you will notice that he shot his juniper bow on the right side also.. Those interested should read Ishi, last of his Tribe.
That guy is the shit. Really impressive.
I'm reading Barbara Tuchman's "A Distant Mirror" and she discusses the murderous and demoralizing effect of the English longbow on French cavalry. The English under Edward III were willing to mix commoners armed with pikes and longbows in with mounted knights and knights who were willing to walk with the commoners to great tactical success.
The situation is analogous today to the 4th Generation non-state actors who keep kicking the asses of Western forces through better tactics, operations, and strategy despite overwhelming Western firepower.
The bow, as I mentioned several months ago, can even be a useful weapon today as the guy in this video proves. Throw-away PVC bows could be staged at different hotspots as you staged weapons ahead of time for your various marches through Baltimore. They make no sound but a thwack. If the neighbors are willing to look the other way, archery could be quite demoralizing on the enemy.
A Distant Mirror is such a good book.
The idea with the PVC is great. By the way, if you wrap one inch PVC in electrical tape—oh my God it hurts as a stick. Charles and I sparred with those things one time and then buried them in a mass grave.
Makes Legolas look like a amateur.